1. Field of the Invention
The disclosures herein generally relate to an information processing system, an information processing apparatus, and a process execution method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cloud computing systems that are configured to enable cooperation between a device, a web service, and a platform providing a distributed environment are known (see e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2011-192250).
The cloud computer system disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2011-192250 includes a request receiving part that receives a processing request of a job from an image forming device, a backend processing part that executes a process based on a message corresponding to the job, and a managing part that manages the number of backend processing parts.
The backend processing part includes a determination unit that determines a task execution status of the job; and a command unit that selects a task service according to the task execution status of the job from multiple task services provided by a service providing apparatus, and issues a command to the service providing device to execute the selected task service.
For example, in a case of converting data from one data format to another data format, a data conversion engine (data conversion program or data conversion library) for executing a data format conversion process may be used in order to increase independence and facilitate maintenance of the program.
Note that use of an engine is not limited to the case of executing a data format conversion process. That is, a process execution engine (process execution program or process execution library) for executing some other type of process may similarly be used to increase independence and facilitate maintenance of the program.
However, for example, in the case of using a data format conversion engine, the number of types of data conversion engines that are required corresponds to the number of different combinations of an input data format and an output data format. For example, in a case where data may be in either one of three different types of data formats before data conversion (input data formats) and the data may be converted into one of three different types of data formats (output data formats), there are nine different combinations of the input data format and the output data format, and accordingly, nine types of data conversion engines are required. In other words, the larger the number of options for the data formats before or after data conversion, the larger the number of types of data conversion engines that are required.
Thus, the number of process execution engines that need to be prepared increases as the number of types of processes to be executed (e.g., data conversion process) increases. Accordingly, there is a demand for a technique for flexibly adapting to such increase in the number of types of a process.